From kites to fire to rice and back to the sun: Makara Sankranti across India

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By Zeel Sundhani

11 min read

  • Festive
  • Lifestyle
  • India
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    Makarasthe divākare puṇyakālo mahān smṛtaḥ |

    tasmāt snānaṃ ca dānaṃ ca kartavyaṃ puṇyavardhanam ||

    When the sun resides in Makara, the time is regarded as highly auspicious;
     Therefore bathing and acts of giving are to be performed, as they increase merit.

    What is Makara Sankranti?

    Makar Sankranti marks a quiet but significant shift in the Indian calendar, the moment when the sun enters Makara (Capricorn) and begins its northward journey, known as Uttarayana. Unlike most Indian festivals that follow the lunar cycle, Sankranti is governed by the movement of the sun, which is why it returns each year around mid-January with a certain calendrical steadiness.

    At its core, Makar Sankranti is about transition. It signals the gradual lengthening of days, the easing of winter and the return of light and warmth. Across agrarian societies, this solar movement has long been read as a sign of renewal, both cosmic and earthly. The festival does not commemorate a single event or story. Instead, it acknowledges a turning point in time itself.

    Because it is anchored in astronomy rather than mythology alone, Makar Sankranti occupies a unique place in the Indian ritual landscape. It is at once practical and symbolic - linked to harvest cycles, seasonal labour and survival, while also carrying ideas of auspiciousness, ethical realignment and fresh beginnings. What emerges is not one festival, but many expressions of the same solar moment, shaped by region, climate and cultural memory.

    Harvest, season and agrarian rhythm

    Makar Sankranti arrives after the harvest has been gathered and stored, when the most demanding phase of agricultural labour is complete. This timing is crucial. The festival unfolds not in anticipation, but in acknowledgement of grain secured, effort expended and survival made possible through collective work and seasonal knowledge.

    Across regions, Sankranti becomes a moment of gratitude. The sun is thanked for its role in ripening crops, the land for its fertility and the rhythms of nature for their reliability. Food takes on ritual importance during this time, not as indulgence, but as offering and sharing. Rice, millet, jaggery and sesame appear repeatedly, not only because they are seasonal, but because they carry the memory of the harvest within them.

    This is also why acts of giving are central to the festival. Alms, cooked food and essentials are shared, reinforcing the idea that abundance is meaningful only when it circulates. In many communities, cattle, as essential partners in cultivation, are honoured alongside the harvest, recognising labour beyond the human.

    Vibrant Vignettes: Batik Tale of Harvest Motion by Prakash Yasala

    Seen through this lens, Makar Sankranti is not a celebration of prosperity, but a pause within the agricultural calendar. It is a moment to take stock of what has been gathered, to acknowledge dependence on forces beyond control and to mark the transition from one seasonal cycle to the next.

    Different names, different ways of celebration

    Although rooted in the same solar transition, Makar Sankranti takes on many names across India, shaped by regional climate, crops and cultural memory. The festival is not recognised by a uniform set of rituals, but by how communities interpret the same moment in time. These celebrations are reimagined through the art styles of those regions, giving us an insight into the rituals, symbolism and community spirit.

    In North India, it is known as Lohri or Maghi in Punjab and Haryana, where the festival centres around fire. Bonfires are lit in open spaces, and offerings of grain, jaggery and sesame are made to the flames. Fire or Agni, becomes a symbol for the sun - warming, purifying and drawing people together in the cold of winter. The act of gathering around the fire reflects both seasonal necessity and ritual meaning.

    Tikuli Lohdi Painting by Ashok Kumar

    In western India, particularly in Gujarat and Rajasthan, the day is celebrated as Uttarayan, where the sky itself becomes part of the festival. Kite flying turns the upward movement of the sun into a shared visual experience, translating a cosmic shift into colour, motion and competition.

    Ganesha Pariwar in Bikaner Art Print by Mahaveer Swami

    In eastern India, the festival is observed as Poush Sankranti in West Bengal and as Magh Bihu or Bhogali Bihu in Assam. Here, the emphasis falls on food, community feasts and ritual bathing, marking the end of the agrarian year and the replenishment of granaries. Temporary structures made of bamboo and straw are built and ceremonially burnt at dawn, followed by shared meals and rural games. These practices foreground abundance and collective participation rather than formal ritual.

    In the south, the festival unfolds as Pongal, particularly in Tamil Nadu. Celebrated over several days, Pongal foregrounds the relationship between humans, animals and land. Cattle are washed, decorated and honoured, acknowledging their central role in cultivation. The cooking of freshly harvested rice in open vessels becomes both offering and announcement, an expression of abundance shared openly.

    In many parts of Tamil Nadu, the Pongal - Sankranti period also coincides with Theru festivals, when temple deities are taken out in large wooden chariots and drawn through village streets. These processions are not specific to Sankranti alone, but their occurrence during the harvest season is deliberate. With agricultural labour complete, communities are able to come together for collective ritual, transforming public space into a shared sacred ground. The movement of the deity through the village mirrors the larger idea of cosmic movement that underlies Sankranti - the sense that order, prosperity and protection must circulate rather than remain fixed.

    Theru- temple chariot festival in Chittara by Ishwar Chowda Naik

    In parts of southern India, the festival does not unfold on a single day. The period around Sankranti is marked by a sequence of observances that include Bhogi, Sankranti and Kanumu, each oriented toward a different aspect of domestic and agrarian life. Bhogi, observed on the eve of Sankranti, is associated with clearing, renewal and the discarding of the old, often enacted through early-morning bonfires and household rituals. Sankranti itself centres on the solar transition, while Kanumu, observed the following day in many rural areas, shifts attention to cattle, land and agricultural continuity, extending the festival’s focus beyond the human household.

    In Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka, the day is marked as Makara Sankranti, often accompanied by ritual bathing, the exchange of sweets, and acts of charity. In Uttar Pradesh, it is known as Khichdi Parv, associated with food offerings and communal feeding, especially at pilgrimage centres.

    Makar Sankranti In Sujani Embroidery by Sanju Devi

    Among Santhal and other tribal communities of eastern India, the Sankranti period is not marked through a fixed festival name so much as through seasonal shifts in everyday life. The end of the agricultural cycle, changes in weather and increased social gathering find expression in visual culture rather than formal ritual. As seen in the below painting, in Santhal Pattachitra painting traditions, motifs such as fish, birds, movement and play appear during this time, reflecting riverine life, subsistence patterns and the rhythm of the season. Rather than illustrating a codified Sankranti ritual, such images translate the solar and seasonal transition into a language rooted in ecology and community experience, while also getting influenced by other mainstream ideas and symbols like kites.

    Kite shaped fishes: Santhal-Tribal Pattachitra by Manoranjan Chitrakar

    Together, these regional variations reveal a festival that is unified not by uniform practice, but by a shared attentiveness to season, sustenance, and the movement of time.

    Origins of Makar Sankranti: astronomy, epic memory and symbol

    Makar Sankranti does not trace its origins to a single founding myth. Instead, it emerges from multiple narratives of astronomical observation, epic memory and symbolic storytelling.

    At the most fundamental level, Sankranti is an astronomical marker. The term itself means transition, the moment the sun enters a new zodiac sign. When the sun moves into Makara (Capricorn), it begins its northward course, Uttarayana. This shift was observed, recorded and ritualised long before it was woven into narrative traditions, giving Sankranti a foundation that is cosmic rather than event-based.

    One of the most well-known narrative associations comes from the Mahabharata. Bhishma, granted the boon of choosing the time of his death, waits on a bed of arrows until the sun turns northward. His decision establishes Uttarayana as an auspicious period, reinforcing the idea that the sun’s direction has moral and spiritual consequences. The Bhagvad Gita (8.24) notes -

    Agnir jyotir ahaḥ śuklaḥ ṣaṇmāsā uttarāyaṇam |

    tatra prayātā gacchanti brahma brahmavido janāḥ ||

    Meaning, “ Fire, light, the bright fortnight, the six months of the sun’s northern course,

    those who depart at this time attain the supreme.”

    Sankranti, in this context, becomes a threshold not only of season, but of ethical time.

    Victory Chronicles of the Mahabharata: Bengal Pattachitra Painting by Manoranjan Chitrakar

    Another strand of belief centres on the relationship between Surya and Shani. In popular tradition, Makar Sankranti marks Surya’s annual entry into the domain ruled by Shani, who governs Makara. Shani is associated with restraint, discipline and karmic justice, forces that temper the sun’s brilliance. The moment is understood as one of reconciliation and balance, where intensity meets limitation. This association is why acts of charity, restraint and ethical recalibration are emphasised during Sankranti.

    Surya Naryana: Kalamkari Painting by Harinath.N

    In some regional traditions, the festival is also linked to Vishnu’s defeat of Sankasura, a figure representing disorder or obstruction. Though not universally narrated, this story aligns symbolically with Sankranti’s themes: the restoration of balance, the re-establishment of order and the movement from disruption toward clarity.

    Underlying these narratives is the figure of Makara itself. Neither fully animal nor entirely abstract, Makara appears in Indian visual culture as a liminal being associated with water, gateways and thresholds, often depicted as the vahana of Ganga. Its presence reinforces the idea of Sankranti as a moment of crossing, where one state gives way to another without abrupt rupture.

    Mystical Grace: Flowing Majesty Goddess Ganga, Kalighat style by Hasir Chitrakar

    Ganga Mata, Kerala Mural Painting by V.M Jijulal

    Taken together, these origins reveal why Makar Sankranti resists a single story. It is a festival shaped by observation, meaning and ritual, where mythology does not explain the festival but gathers around it, interpreting a change in the sky through the language of ethics, memory and symbol.

    The sun at the centre: worship, light and consciousness

    At its heart, Makar Sankranti is a festival of solar attention. Everything else including harvest, ritual, mythology, etc. radiates outward from the sun’s movement. The festival marks not the sun as a distant celestial body, but as a lived presence - one that determines seasons, sustenance and the very structure of time.

    The Sun in Madhubani from Naina Creation

    Surya Devta: Dhokra Handicraft by Kunal Rana

    Across traditions, the sun is understood as the regulator of order. It governs agricultural cycles, fixes the calendar and establishes rhythm in both ritual and daily life. To acknowledge the sun at Sankranti is therefore to recognise a force that is at once cosmic and intimate, visible in the sky, yet felt most directly on the ground, in crops, warmth and labour.

    Sun and Moon in Gond by Gareeba Singh Tekam

    The Farmer Life in Pithora Art by Chanchal Soni

    This reverence is not always expressed through grand ceremonies. Often, it appears in quieter acts like bathing at sunrise, offering water, facing east or beginning the day with invocation. The emphasis is less on spectacle and more on alignment - placing oneself, however briefly, in conscious relation to the source of light.

    Women Worshipping Sun in Madhubani by Priti Karn

    Within this solar framework, the Gayatri Mantra holds particular significance. Addressed to Savitr, the animating solar principle, the mantra does not ask for prosperity or protection. Instead, it seeks clarity of thought - an illumination of the intellect. Its presence within the Sankranti rituals reinforces the idea that the festival is not only about seasonal change, but about inner recalibration. As the sun turns northward, the human mind is invited to turn toward discernment and awareness.

    Gayatri Mantra : Tanjore Painting by Sanjay Tandekar

    Seen together, sun worship and mantra form a cohesive philosophy. The sun represents continuity and order while the Gayatri articulates the ethical and intellectual response to that order. Sankranti becomes, then, more than a marker of time. It is a moment that links light to responsibility, visibility to understanding and cosmic movement to human consciousness.

    Give our other blog a read to know more about the depiction of sun in Indian art - https://www.memeraki.com/blogs/posts/representation-of-the-sun-in-folk-and-tribal-art?srsltid=AfmBOor5iPkeyU3DFHxsPCA69_56DrSkfdUJHmXT3fq3Jty55PkanrM9

    Conclusion

    Makar Sankranti resists being reduced to a single story, ritual or image. It is shaped instead by movement - of the sun across the sky, of seasons across the land and of communities adjusting themselves to these shifts. What binds its many regional forms is not uniform practice, but a shared attentiveness to time and transition.

    Across India, this attentiveness finds expression through material and visual culture. Embroidery, painting, metalwork and ritual objects become ways of recording seasonal knowledge and lived experience. Whether through the quiet stitch of a Sujani narrative, the symbolic language of tribal painting or the visual emphasis on the sun across folk traditions, art functions not as decoration but as a response to change.

    In this sense, Makar Sankranti is less a festival to be explained than one to be observed - through harvest, ritual, light and craft. It marks a moment when cosmic order intersects with everyday life, while artistic traditions offer a way to express that intersection in a visible, tangible form.

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